Edward Snowden is the single most influential person in the entire history of information security and it's not even close. The data he revealed changed the dir

Edward Snowden is the single most influential person in the entire history of information security and it's not even close. The data he revealed changed the direction of the evolution of the internet rapidly and completely. HTTPS websites, E2E encrypted communications, VPN providers, metadata reduction, etc. All of these things gained traction because of Snowden and are integral to the modern internet. Aside from the very real gains in privacy and security, I would also like to make the argument that we would currently be living in a fragmented hellscape of an internet if the net had not turned (mostly) opaque after 2013. Imagine the same AI spam filters currently operating on your email but for all network traffic. We would be suffocating under the weight of (sometimes) well-meaning, but ill-conceived security solutions. Fortunately, we took a different path.